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Highlights of Oracle OpenWorld Usability Feedback Sessions

For the fifth year in a row, the onsite usability lab at Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) was a great success. More than 100 customers and partners took the time to team up with our user experience (UX) experts and provide feedback on new designs and concepts. Over three days, UX teams conducted 57 one-on-one user feedback sessions, 4 focus groups, and 7 surveys. In addition, we conducted a voice capture activity and were able to collect close to 70 speech samples for mobile voice research purposes at the lab and DEMOgrounds.

OOW 2012 UX customer engagement team: Teena Singh and Gozel Aamoth

Here are some comments from UX participants:

“I liked the approach and the opportunity to provide feedback. User experience should
be given as much attention as the current focus on customer experience, and I think programs like this are a very good investment.”(Participated in 1-1 session)

“Diverse people sharing their experiences
and realizing that globally we all have very common challenges….”(Participated in a group session)

Oracle Usability Lab Tours

On Thursday and Friday during Oracle OpenWorld, more than 60 people took the chartered bus ride from San Francisco to Oracle headquarters for a lab tour.

Oracle customers and partners got a first-hand look at how we conduct usability research on Oracle products and were able to see the vision for the next generation of Oracle’s Applications User Experience. We introduced some of the latest technologies such as eye-tracking and facial recognition software. The Applications User Experience team also introduced Voice, a smartphone solution under development that uses the voice, with a new demonstration and the new face of Fusion, which is the next-generation welcome experience for Oracle Fusion Applications. The new face of Fusion was unveiled at OpenWorld, and these lab tour participants were among the very first to see it. Read more about the new Face of Fusion.

Gozel Aamoth, User Experience team member, leads the tour attendees to the Labs at Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, CA.

All India User Group Annual Event: Sangam

The Oracle Applications User Experience team will be presenting and supporting a demo station at the All India User Group (AIUG) Annual Event: Sangam 2012 on Friday, November 2, 2012, and Saturday, November 3, 2012, in Bangalore, India. Read more.

UKOUG Conference Usability Feedback Sessions

During this year alone, the Oracle Applications User Experience team has travelled the world and worked with more than a thousand customers and partners in the US, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Japan, and India. It’s time to make a stop in the UK.

By popular demand, the Applications User Experience and product management teams will conduct onsite usability feedback sessions at the UK Oracle User Group Conference 2012. This conference will attract more than 1700 attendees from the UK and elsewhere abroad. We are inviting all customers and partners to get involved. This is a great opportunity to participate in a usability feedback session where your feedback and expertise will help Oracle develop unbeatable products and solutions. You’ll also get an early look at the direction that our enterprise software is heading. User experience sessions will be held at The ICC in Birmingham, UK, on Monday, December 3 and Tuesday, December 4. If you’re based in the UK and had not planned to attend this conference, you’re still eligible to be a part of the user experience event. Please contact us for more details.

UKOUG Conference Oracle Applications User Experience Presentations

The Oracle Applications User Experience team is offering a number of sessions that might interest you:

Read more about the Oracle Applications User Experience’s presentations and involvement at the UKOUG 2012 Conference here.

Update from the Oracle Usability Advisory Board

The Oracle Applications User Experience team hosted an all-day “A Day in the Life of User Experience” event at Oracle headquarters (Redwood Shores, California) with 31 Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members and guests on September 28, 2012. This event included an introduction to the science behind user experience and the user experience design principles and philosophies that Oracle embraces. Our user experience professionals taught how to build a wireframe user interface model, how to conduct user experience activities in an Agile development process, and how to run a user feedback session so that you can be sure that you are delivering a product that meets your users’ needs. Oracle Applications User Experience Vice President Jeremy Ashley gave guests a preview of the new face of Fusion. In the afternoon, guests received a lab tour with demos of our latest user experience projects.

We are pleased that the OUAB expanded to two new regions in 2012: Latin America and Middle East. During OpenWorld, the OUAB conducted kick-off meetings with its Latin America and Middle East founding board members. They made presentations on their organizations, roles, Oracle applications platforms, and top usability issues.

Also at OpenWorld, the OUAB held its annual board luncheon with 47 Oracle board members. This event, held on October 2, 2012, was well attended by board members from the US, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East.

A View into Oracle’s User Experience Research Tool Kit

Learn more about the user experience research methods that the Oracle’s Applications User Experience team uses to design its next-generation user experiences in all Oracle Applications products. Teena Singh, a Principal Product Manager on the Application’s User Experience team, talks about focus groups at user group conferences in an article from the August 2012 edition of the Information InDepth Newsletter. In an article in Oracle’s Profit magazine, see members of the Applications User Experience team at work in Oracle’s usability labs.

The Future User Experience: Responsive, Adaptive, and Predictive

What will the future user experience of enterprise application software be like? One view is that components will become increasingly intelligent, responding and adapting to—even predicting—end-user tendencies and requests. Read more on the Usable Apps Blog.

VoX has announced the launch of Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns, which became available this summer. Read the post to find out how members of the developer community are reacting to the news, and see how you can implement the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience in your Oracle applications today.

In this interview, Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, PeopleSoft Development., discusses how PeopleSoft has an intuitive look and feel. He notes, “If it’s not obvious what they need to do a task, then the UI isn’t working. So the application needs to make it simple for users to find information they need, complete a task, do all the things they are responsible for, and it really helps when the UI just makes sense.” Read more.

The Oracle Applications User Experience team likes to remind people that user experience is more than just a pretty user interface. The Applications User Experience team has spent thousands of hours observing customers, getting to know their needs, and learning how Oracle software can fit seamlessly and productively into the way that they do their work. That intensive research has led to an innovative, next-generation user experience that moves the user from one task into the next with little effort or training. Read more here about how Oracle Fusion Middleware is the backbone of Oracle’s next-generation applications user experience.

When Oracle embarked on designing the next generation of enterprise applications, rethinking the user experience from top to bottom was a priority, and you can see that today in any demonstration of Oracle Fusion Applications. What people often miss, however, is that this willingness to reinvent didn’t stop with the user experience. Our approach went deeper, extending all the way from the tools that Oracle uses to build the applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware, to the support that Oracle offers customers for Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle has, in fact, approached Oracle Fusion Applications as a complete customer experience. Oracle has redeveloped the support process for Oracle Fusion Applications down to the smallest detail. Read more here about how Oracle Fusion Applications transforms Oracle support.

New White Paper

A new white paper on the Oracle Applications User Experience team’s research and design process is available on Usable Apps. Read this white paper to understand where our standards come from and the level of investment that Oracle has made in the next generation of applications user experience.

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